Saturday, April 22, 2006

GI Korea has a picture of a guy who takes the whole Dokdo thing way too personally and stabs himself in the stomach (warning, not for kids). If that is not good enough for you, Jeff at RIK has a bigger picture. If Japan actually did what Korea wanted every time a Korean did something stupid like this, the Koreans would have half of Japan under their control by now.

Idiot (Yeah, I'm talking about you, Yang Bong-ho).

UPDATE: I should have guessed that the Big Hominid would be on this one.

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Seoul's latest territorial row with Tokyo over a cluster of rocky islets in the East Sea dates back to Japan's colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula in the early part of the last century, analysts said Tuesday.

Uh, no it does not.

The analysts are referring to the 1905 annexation of Dokdo (Takeshima to the Japanese) by the Shimane Prefecture. Perhaps the Japanese had problems with local authorities taking too much initiative (remember the Manchurian incident?) but a prefecture has no authority to lay claim to territory on its own incentive. The annexation was just a reorganization of territory already claimed by the Japanese, at claim going back to the early 17th century. In fact, the Japanese were making effective use of the islands (fishing outposts and such) decades before the annexation.

Please note that I am NOTsupporting Japan's claim, just noting that the guys quoted in Yonhap are playing loose with the facts.

To see my views on the whole mess see thesethreeposts. I hope to get part four done by this weekend.

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

When word leaked of an internal memo in the Japanese foreign ministry that said President Roh would not give up bashing Japan because it was good politics, the Roh administration had an interesting response. They bashed Japan (JoongAng):

An agitated Blue House also said yesterday that it would deal seriously with the report if it is found to exist. "There were a lot of voices calling for strong diplomatic countermeasures if it's true that is what the report says," said Choi In-ho, deputy spokesman for the Blue House, after a meeting in the Blue House in which the issue was discussed.

If you go to the link, you will find that Dokdo is also involved (of course).

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

This is the third of a four-part series that I started last year on Korea and Japan's claims to Dokdo/Takeshima. In part one, I went over Japan's claim. In part two, I went over Korea's historical claim.

Once again, I am using the Dokdo page at Korea.net (the Korean government's 'official homepage'). Items lifted from Korea.net will be printed in green.

(Note: To make it easier on myself, I'm going to refer to Dokdo/Takeshima as Dokdo for the rest of this piece. I referred to it as Takeshima while examining the Japanese claim.)

Korea claims that, during and after World War 2, the allies (especially the United States in its capacity of occupier of Japan) striped Japan of Dokdo and gave sovereignty of it back to Korea.

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

I came across this report yesterday on a group of Japanese ethnic Koreans who went to Dokdo to support Korea's claim to the islands:

Japanese teenagers of Korean descent visited the Dokdo islands last Friday to celebrate the upcoming 60th anniversary of Korea's liberation from Japan. The visit was organized by the National Council of Youth Organizations in Korea and the mobile telecommunications carrier KTF,which invited 16 Korean-Japanese teenagers from Tokyo and Osaka, along with 16 teenagers from Korea. Upon touching down, the teenagers waved the Korean flag, shouting, "Dokdo belongs to Korea! We protect Dokdo!"

While it is nice for Korea to get all the help it can, I worry about how this will play with people back in Japan. Ethnic Koreans already face prejudice in Japan in employment and even marriage. They have even faced muderous death. But this can certainly not help their situation. How will Japanese feel when they see their citizens backing a foreign country in an international dispute?

I can't help but compare this to what many Japanese-Americans did during World War Two. Many young Japanese-American men volunteered for military service from the internment camps that the American government had placed them. The actions of those young men helped shame the US into recognizing its mistake soon after the war ended.

What will actions like the latest Dokdo protest tell Japanese about the Koreans among them?

Perhaps the Korean-Japanese should follow the example of many Chinese-Koreans and head for the States.

Thursday, June 02, 2005

UPDATE: To see why the Marmot gets over 2,500 hits a day while I only get about 400, see his much fuller coverage of the same event.

Original post: In an incident that should embarrass both sides into doing something about North-East Asian fish pirates, Korean and Japanese maritime police boats ended up in a tug-of-war over a Korean boat that had been illegally fishing in Japanese waters:

Maritime police forces from Korea and Japan engaged in a literal tug-of- war on the open sea off Ulsan yesterday after both sides lashed lines to a Korean fishing boat in an attempt to pull the vessel into their respective territorial waters.

The Japanese authorities said that the Korean fishing vessel, named Sinpungho, intruded into their exclusive economic zone and fished illegally.Just after midnight Tuesday, three Japanese boats approached the Sinpungho after the Korean trawler was discovered on radar to be 5 kilometers (3 miles) inside Japan's economic zone.

That's too bad for the fishermen but it was a fair cop. But then things started to get silly:

Fearing capture by the Japanese, the Korean boat headed back toward Korea but was caught by a Japanese vessel. When three police officers tried to board the Shin Poong Ho, one fell into the sea.In the confusion as the Japanese sought to rescue the officer, the Sinpungho, with the other two Japanese officers aboard, tried to escape. In an effort to stop the boat from fleeing, the Japanese officers attacked Shin Poong Ho's captain, Jeong Wook-hyun, and another crew member.....

Time out. Now, call me strange but if a crook is trying to escape and the police are trying to stop him, I think a verb other than 'attack' might be in order. Police 'attempt to arrest.'

In any case, Fish Pirate Shin made it to Korean waters and called for back up:

When it reached Korean waters, the vessel reported the incident to Busan maritime police. Ulsan police sent three ships, one of which tied up to the Sinpungho on its port side in order pull it back to Korea. A Japanese vessel, smaller than the Korean counterparts, lashed on to the opposite side in a bid to drag the ship toward Japan.

The article doesn't say how it ended but I assume that the bigger Korea boat won the contest.

This whole incident indicates a serious lack of cooperation between the Korean and Japanese maritime police forces (AKA: coast guards). If there was trust between the two then the Japanese could have just reported the incident to the Koreans and maintained contact until the Koreans came to arrest Fish Pirate Shin.

But nooooo, that just couldn't happen. What we have instead is the incident degenerating into another pissing contest between Korea and Japan:

According to a Korean government official, Japan argued that because the Sinpungho had intruded into its economic zone and remained on the open sea yesterday, Japan had the right to seize it for investigation. The Korean official called the notion "unacceptable." The standoff took place about 29 kilometers off Ulsan. The area, while in the Korean exclusive economic zone, belongs to neither country.Noting the incident, Korea's foreign minister, Ban Ki-moon, expressed his concerns to Japan's deputy foreign minister, Ichiro Isawa, who was visiting Korea for an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Jeju Island beginning today."The Japanese should retreat so that we can deal with this internally," Mr. Ban was quoted by a government official as saying. "If there's any penalty to be handed out, we will do it."

My take on this is that, once the Japanese let Fish Pirate Shin get away, they should have called the Koreans to take up pursuit. For their part the Koreans should arrest Shin and turn the proceeds from selling his load of pirated fish to the Japanese (after a speedy and fair trial, of course).

It is just ridiculous for stuff like this to still be going on in the twenty-aughts.

Wednesday, May 04, 2005

I was doing my morning click-a-round and came over to the Chosun Ilbo when this popped up:

The staff of the English-language edition of Chosun.com wish to apologize to readers who may have been offended by a May 2 article on this website headlined "U.S.: North Korea Apparently Fires Missile into Sea of Japan". We would like to explain that the article was not a Chosun.com article, but rather one provided to us by the Voice of America (VOA), one of our partner organizations.

Due to our agreement with VOA, we do not change either the content or the headline of articles it provides. We recognize, however, that using an article that employs the term "Sea of Japan" may be offensive to some readers, especially considering the sensitive state of relations between Korea and Japan. For this, we sincerely apologize, and the article in question has been erased.

I don't know if I will use this in the future. I just wanted to save it for posterity.

Friday, April 22, 2005

Plunge has opened up his own blog and has started it off with a bang. In his first real post, he gives a long a well-researched piece on the belief in many quarters that Japan's colonial occupation laid the groundwork for Korea's later economic growth. To put it mildly, he disagrees:

Given the caveats mentioned previously, it is safe to assume that Korea’s capitalistic birth came from freeing themselves from the yoke of Japan and then taking advantage of a government under the leadership of Park that was friendly to those companies poised to help Korea grow. It had little or nothing to do with policies created by the colonial government of Japan. Japan annexed Korea for its own strength and growth. Its policies were tailored to the needs of Japan and to help fuel its future conquests.

So, considering that the nearest landfall to Takeshima is Korea's Utsuryo (Ulleungdo in Korean), Japan's claim to Takeshima can only be considered valid if it has a stronger historical claim than Korea does. Based upon the evidence that I have seen, Japan's historical claim can not be dismissed. measure to reform the traditional administrative system. This Decree placed Dokdo under the jurisdiction of the Ulleungdo County office. The Decree stipulates: "…the Headman of Uldo [a newly designated County of Ulleungdo] shall have jurisdiction over Ulleungdo, Jukdo and Seokdo [Dokdo]…"Therefor, I will have to do some research on Korea's claim before coming to my own conclusion.

So now I will go over Korea's claim.

(Note: To make it easier on myself, I'm going to refer to Dokdo/Takeshima as Dokdo for the rest of this piece. I referred to it as Takeshima while examining the Japanese claim.)

While I have not been able to find a short enough succinct statement of Korea's claim to Dokdo, I have come across a couple of documents from the Dokdo page at Korea.net. Korea.net is run by 'the Korean Overseas Information Service (KOIS) of the Government Information Agency.' This seems official enough to me to be considered the word on Korea's claim. Because of the length of the documents involved, I'm going to interlace my comments with the material from the KOIS). Items from the KOIS pages are in green.

The Korean argument can be broken down into three sections: First, that Dokdo is historically Korean. Second, that Korea regained sovereignty over Dokdo after the allied defeat of Japan in 1945. Third, that Korea has exercised effective control over Dokdo since the foundation of the Republic in 1948. I will deal with the first claim in this post, the second in the third post and deal with the third claim in the forth and (mercifully) last post of this series.